How would you change the ACM story?

[EmptyVector]

I know we didn't get much in terms of story for A:CM, in fact I thought it was awful but there were elements of the story I feel if tweaked right could have worked.

First and foremost I would have definitely had the Sulaco for the early part of the game however I would have made it so that containment of the Xenomorphs aboard the Sulaco had gone horribly wrong. I would have also would have made it so that your marine team is one of the first sent in as a recon unit to ascertain the situation on the Sulaco. When you board the Sulaco you find research equipment scattered about, broken glass, no blood just the signs that something happened here but you don't know what. You are asked to find a mapping device to see if you can find any PDT's on the ship, you find that a large group are located in engineering.

After you come across the freezers and the drop ship hanger, you enter Engineering come across a quarantine area in which you enter and find the cocooned scientists the majority of them are dead but you find one alive. That's when all hell breaks loose. I would personally have had no Weyland Yutani mercs on the Sulaco, I would have had it as a failed attempt to contain the Xenomorphs who eventually overrun and killed the scientists/security on board.

As for how the team got to LV-426, I would have had Weyland Yutani booby trapping the bridge so when the team have to make a fighting retreat to a more secure location such as the bridge, you could have had a last stand moment with sentry turrets as the aliens come in through the floor and ceiling, killing the odd squad member as you or an co op ally try and regain control of the ship. When you key in, the booby trap activates launching a salvo of missiles into the Sephora, due to the ship being so close, the Sulaco is damages in the resulting explosions and both ships orbits begin to destabilize and you have to quickly find an EEV in order to escape.

This is just some idea's but what things would you have changed?

[Xenomorphine]

By not having anything to do with the Sulaco or Hadley's Hope. There's wriggle room for possibly setting a story in the immediate aftermath, at the derelict, but however it's concluded, it would need to square with the 'Alien Resurrection' quote.

Would have been much easier to set it somewhere else entirely. They really painted themselves into a creative corner with this situation. Or at least, as much of one as they could without portraying the third and fourth films as Ripley's dreams - which, considering the dream-reading technology demonstrated in 'Prometheus', has actually become a little more likely as a possible writing angle.

[RagingDragon]

Well, I personally feel that Alien: Resurrection so thoroughly annihilated any possibility of stories set in the same century as the first two, it should be easily discarded given the complete mess we've been left with after the AvP films, which are supposed to be canon as well.

Even still, though, if you want to operate within Alien movie canon (as close as possible) it wouldn't be hard at all to have more events with the Alien, WY, and the USCM, they would just have to be kept secret and covered up, all the way to the ending.

This would involve a lot of covert action, investigations, special forces, secret research blah blah, but could easily lend itself to explain why no one else ever heard of the Xenomorphs as well as why Weyland-Yutani was toppled and forgotten as a corporation.

This could be something that directly happened due to the Aliens and Weyland's mad scramble to acquire them. He could just as easily compromise his own company doing this, leading to an undercover conflict with the USCM, and the whole story could be related to the public as a cover-up. This actually meshes well with the films, despite Aliens having a bit more involvement with the 'public' than the other two.

Simple.

But no, we need der Sulaco.

[ScardyFox]

I'm going to try and take the angle of trying to fix or put in pieces to make better sense of the existing story. That seems far more amusing of a puzzle to try and piece together in a more meaningful way.

I would have had the game open up with a WT ship talking some techno babble and cryptic nebulous dialog about their mission. You would have found out that they were shadowing the Sulaco and were there to pick up the pieces if Burke failed. Burke could have been on it, or nudged into doing what he did but the point remains, WT put the necessary pieces in place to ultimately take control off the situation.

If the Marines had found nothing. They leave.

If the marines found something and save the colonist. WT clean up crew magically shows up.

Marines get out, WT boards the Sulaco, with acquired coding and jettison the crew like Ripley applied Burke would do.

Either or WT had always intended on a shadow vessel to vulture on whats happening.

After that is established I would have had WT go down, collect eggs or whatever and another nebulous problem happens (that can be ironed out later in game as pieces of what happen gather). WT personal, charading as Colonel Marines, wake Hicks to gather intelligence on what they're bringing aboard. They transfer Hicks to their ship (then ultimately down to the planet) and plant some kind of body double (more nebulous junk) just to keep up the charade for when they wake up Ripley and to get rid of any questions as to where Hicks is.

It doesn't get to that point because things go bad on the Sulaco. She goes on to Fury (for whatever reason) and WT ends up getting control back via long range com link which is why the ship is back. When the Ship comes back it is infested, WT troops are trying to take control again, which is why you run into them. The "shadow" vessel gets contact that the Sabura (however its spelled) will be arriving shortly and the ship goes back into hiding while they figure out their next move.


I just would have added more story as to why and how the WT personal are there and added the implication that they have some top tier people in the military who are on their payroll. This would have explained (on another level) as to why it was so important to get everything on them.

[livin_target]

By not having anything to do with the Sulaco or Hadley's Hope. There's wriggle room for possibly setting a story in the immediate aftermath, at the derelict, but however it's concluded, it would need to square with the 'Alien Resurrection' quote.

I agree. By setting it on the Sulaco/LV426, they certainly bound the writers hands and had to have them hand wave so many plot points that it just didn't make sense (Why is the Sulaco in orbit around LV426? Why is Hadley's Hope not just a crater? Where the hell did all of these aliens come from? etc). To be honest, the little story details that one of the developers of AvP2010 revealed about their original plans to use the Sulaco made a little more sense but I am glad they were forced to abandon that concept.

[JokersWarPig]

If we have to use the blue print of the game this is what I would have done.

The first thing I would change is Winters rank. I'd make him a competent Lieutenant and a close friend of Captain Cruz.

There would be you're basic training on board the Sephora where some character development happens between you and your squad. Little things that make you care about them.

I would have had the Sulaco "parked" on the surface of LV426 (that's probably a big problem with my idea right there)
The Sephora's soldiers would go down to investigate and find either all of the WY personnel dead/hived because of a break in containment -or-
The Marines would land and fight the WY forces for the Sulaco (we would have no idea they where WY, maybe it be reasoned they where some hostile faction in universe until the reveal of WY involvement). After the first level or two of human fighting containment of the xenomorphs in the Sulaco or WY research lab would be broken and things would go down hill from there.
Marine forces would initially be destroyed by their contact with the Aliens and the survivors would be forced to take refuge in Hadley's Hope. Preparations would be made to defend the colony and the marines would set up a number of defenses using auto turrets, motion sensors, mines, APC's, etc etc. The Aliens would initially try to sneak past these defenses using sewers and maintenance tunnels which the player and his team would have to investigate, fight through, close up and set defenses in. Insert random generator fixing mission here.
The dropships on the sephora wouldn't be able to evacuate or reinforce the marines on the planet because of an AA battery activated by WY forces during the first fight and before the containment breach. The guns would have to be destroyed/deactivated which would lead to the first initial contact with the new hive and the queen.
During this sequence key squad mates would be lost and the queen would be "killed". The few squad mates would then barely make it back to the defenses of the colony.
Contact is then made with the Sephora and her drop ships who begin their decent.
This is where the climax of the game occurs and the Alien onslaught begins.

The colony basically goes under siege (Khe Sahn in space! I'm keeping with camerons Vietnam referances  ) and the initial attack is lead by Crushers who destroy the APC defense line and open a way into the colony for the the soldier's. As the player you would have to fend off the attack long enough for other soldiers to evacuate to the vehicle bay, where other APC's where being repaired (anyone see where I'm going with this?).
You and your squad end up getting pushed back to the original ops center from the film and a squad mate would end up sacrificing  themselves to blow some charges in order to stem the tide of Aliens assaulting you. You awake from the explosion and try to defend ops for as long as possible, but an Alien tackles you out the window.
insert description of the E3 demo we saw, just with more intense fighting and more casualties.

The player is dropped by the queen because of a grenade fired by Cruz; because of the steady stream of Aliens he orders everyone into the APC's to evacuate to an emergency landing zone. Cruz end's up being fatally wounded by the queen while getting into your APC, leaving you in command.
There would be an APC chase scene where the queen and her horde chase you and the other APC's. The player would be either gunning or driving, dispatching a Crusher and deterring the queen.
The player makes it to the emergency evacuation location which is a small outpost are with a large landing pad. The player holds out until they're down to the last of their ammo (Ala end of the US campaign in COD W@W) and as the queen and her guard are about to deliver the killing blow to the out post and the last of your troops the drop ships arrive, two transports and two "gun ships" for cover. The gun ships would cover the player and the last remaining marines as they board the transport birds and when everyone's on board it would cut to a cinematic.

The cinematic would be the drop ships breaking orbit and Lt. Winter giving the order to nuke the planet from orbit as they approach the sephora.

Thats what i would have done, I sprinkled enough references to the movie in there with out being cliche i think.

[Aceburster]

I would leave the Sulaco in but it would be over Fury and just be a tutorial for controls and to show things off but without Aliens in it AT FIRST. You get the flight recorder, find out that something happened to the crew over LV-426 and that some nasty things happened.

The Sephora goes out to see what happened down on LV-426 while Rhino team are tasked with making repairs on the Sulaco. Right after the Sephora leaves the area, a WY ship shows up and proceeds to send men down to Fury (the ship from Alien 3)

The WY crew does their best to keep you from going down to Fury for the time being because they have to handle a "prisoner riot"
and military would just complicate the situation.

Your team finds another egg on the Sulaco (lol) and someone gets facehugged. You ask the WY ship for assistance and they gladly send men aboard.

Skip ahead 7 weeks and the ship is repaired but there is a small outbreak of Aliens roaming around the ship. Your character is trying to deal with the threat with the assistance of WY who is secretly using subjects they planned on using down on Fury aboard the Sulaco to generate more Aliens. You keep battling back the threat until it is decided that the Sulaco should be abandoned.

Unfortunately someone sets the Sulaco on a course to LV-426 and youre along for the ride... with the Aliens and no escape options.
you get to the Sephora after 10 weeks and as you try to warn them, your player and the remaining crew are killed by WY men who have been manipulating the ship the whole time. The Sulaco lands on LV-426 at a different processor far far away from Hadleys Hope.

I would rather have that as a revelation than Hicks... The second half of the game you play as another team who gets into crazy new adventures on LV-426 while the Sephora is under direct attack from WY. eventually the WY ship is destroyed and you fight a Queen on top of the landed Sulaco (which is set to explode) while waiting for emergency evac.

[Elicas]

I would have had several levels where you face absolutely no Xenomorphs at all, creepy flickering lights, plenty of tension and false tracker readings, musical cues that something is f**king wrong here man. You start off on the Sulacco as it nears Earth having already dumped the EEV. Doing a sweep of the whole ship looking for answers. You find the bridge, download the ships flight path recordings and head on down to Fury 161 looking for the crashed EEV. Imagine revisiting the steam works and ducting of A3, with the tracker signals and near pitch darkness, not knowing if there is anything on the level with you or not (there wouldn't be, another tension raising level). All you find is mutilated bodies scattered around, and all the machinary shut down eerily silent. Eventually you report you've found nothing, no trace except that a Weyland-Yutani team had come and shut down the facility a couple of weeks before you got there.

Then you go to LV-426. The atmosphere processor is a crater, Hadley's needed to be trashed ten times more than it was, completely structurally unsound. More tracker tension as you move through the ruins, maybe finding a few Xeno bodies left rotting from various fights during the film, but nothing conclusive. Eventually it looks like a bust, there no Xenomorphs, no Marine team, there's nothing f**king here man!

The last place to check is to suit up and go down into the depths of the Atmosphere Processor, (there was nothing to say that the sub levels would be taken out, the explosion looked like an above surface nuke going off in the film) where we would find the upper floors of the Hive destroyed. There would be one half a level or so of colonists, plus some of the Marines like Apone who we know got taken and cocooned, all dead and rotting with chests burst through. Finally, after all this time, I'd have one single Lurker take out one of your Marines. There's a few eggs left over in a secondary egg reserve (similar to Ant colonies with multiple egg chambers) and there is only a couple of Drones left to tend them. Every Marine you lose becomes another Xeno you need to deal with eventually, no special Aliens, just Lurker AI attempting to abduct your team mates and kill you.

Eventually you're left with the decision, do we go down to the egg chamber and take it out, or do we flee?

[SpreadEagleBeagle]

Elicas, I like the way you think! Really eerie and scary, like it should be. Unfortunately they would never make an Alien game like that.

[Local Trouble]

Company finds the carcass of the dead facehugger that infected the ox/dog and they clone it.  Shit hits the fan.  There's your story.

No need to revisit any of the locales from the movies, except maybe Gateway Station.

[Aceburster]

Company finds the carcass of the dead facehugger that infected the ox/dog and they clone it.  Shit hits the fan.  There's your story.

No need to revisit any of the locales from the movies, except maybe Gateway Station.

Probably the best way to set off a game in the universe without messing with things, but where do the Colonial Marines fit in?

[Local Trouble]

I assume Gateway Station has marines stationed there.  I'd basically cherry pick the best elements from the Gibson script for Alien 3 and use that as my framework for the story.

Can't be worse than what we got.

[Aceburster]

Id play that.

[Local Trouble]

It also assumes that General Perez is a moron and everything he said in Alien Resurrection was wrong.  I can handle that.

[YutaniDitch]

Hi guys

Well, if I were the one creating the story, I would still place it in Hadley's Hope, but my take would have a before ALIENS; with a security officer stationed there, fighting the Aliens in the Atmosphere Processing Station, first, and with a great smartgun weapon (there would be an armory that we can only get to via a well-placed Audio Log, and following a maze of tunnels with Xenos popping up at random, with us having a motion tracker unlike the Marines one, more resembling Ash's in ALIEN... Low lit main tunnel connecting the Atmo Processing Station and Hadley's Hope, where we need to sprint back to Hadley and avoid immediate death... we can do what the Marines ought to have done in ALIENS: collapse the main tunnel leading from the APS to the colony... We would have to place strategically placed seismic charges to blow the tunnel at a PRECISE junction of the tunnel... Any further or any less than that, we would fail the mission...

So, ACM would be divided in 2 locations only: Atmosphere Processing Station and Hadley's Hope... the biggest would be the first part, before the crap hit the fan, where we would meet our character, who is going on the first team to retrieve the eggs from the Derelict and the story, in the first portion, starts right from the moment they receive Burke's instructions to go check the Derelict's grid... After Newt's father is brought back, we are part of a team that goes to retrieve the eggs, so in a way, our efforts in the first part of the game would be to correct the wrong we had done, by killing Zenos, trying to save people (eventually succeeding in saving some, but with them being intercepted by Wey-Yu and 'sanitised', to control the situation... So, there would be all kinds of missions in this first part of the game: cover people's retreat while attacking Aliens, retrieve people from the Hive, prevent the hundreds of eggs from hatching, etc... however, we lose in the end, of course, and our guy would either escape when all hope's lost or die in combat...

Then we get to the second part of the game, the ACM part, where we would be a Marine team dispatched to investigate the Sulaco's whereabouts... They find it on their way back to Earth, and board it for 15 minutes in the game, where they find the ejected pods, the dropship area, and we are a Marine Lieutenant, who investigates the Sulaco logs (no bridge, which was a weird idea in the game we got, I mean, where were all the people supposed to be on the Bridge, on the Maintenance areas we saw, etc?!?!) and finding out that Ripley and crew were ejected and crashed on Fury 161... This Sulaco mission is only 3o minutes long, where we can make it longer or shorter, depending on our willingness to explore the ship or not... We go first to LV-426 to check for survivors, and we see that the APS is in ruins, and so is Hadley's HOpe compound, but we find an exterior hatch that leads to the lower floors that were still intact... We find some straglers, some Aliens that survived the explosion, but the main focus is intel gathering... We find the coccooned bodies of Hudson, we find the collapsed airduct where we find Gorman's sidearm (the collectables, I liked the idea, but finding them where they are supposed to be found... for instance, Hick's shotgun would be found on the elevator where he dropped his acid-soaked gear...etc...)

The main focus of this game, and to avoid repetition, would me more focused on the story, not just blasting away Xenos... The Xenos would appear unpredictably, in atmospheric tense moments, like ALIEN, where we would get a blip on the tracker, and then we could have a dynamic respawn system where the next time we played that level, instead of one, we would have a horde of 10 or so and we had to either run and hide inside a room where we would weld it shut and open a new one to escape the Aliens which are pounding and almost starting to get through... I would take the pursuit we got in the game and instead of making it a Mutant Xeno, I would get 10 Aliens trying to get to us!

There are other ideas floating in my mind, but the key idea is to make less Xenos, but more intelligent, unpredictable (in a good way) and use a respawn system to make each time we play the game, either the Xenos appear from different airducts, or ceiling panels, or from the ground... and change their numbers, either 2, 3, or just one... And the Aliens would me sneaky, not going for it in the open, but rather use the closest hatch, trap door, airduct closer to us...!

The story would be filling in the blanks before ALIENS and after it... We see Hadley's HOpe, both before and after the Aliens events, we have two playable characters, both a security officer (he could also be a Marine visiting his brother or sister on Hadley's!) and a Marine who is sent. like in the game, to check what happened... The difference would be that there was no power, and the only power we would get would be from portable batteries which would lit onlu small portions of the set...

ONly the lower floors of the colony would be usable, since the entire structure would have been obliterated by the blast in ALIENS... Also, there would be pockets or radiation and some areas we would need to wear protection suits...

And so on and so forth... I am sure some, if not many, of you will dislike immensely my ideas, but they are just off the top of my head... Of course, they would be made better and always in tune ith the source material...

Anyway, this is my LONG take on how I would approach ACM (probably just name it 'ALIENS - HADLEY'S HOPE'...)